Voenix Rising

Let's get to the "stuff" first.

DUNE has been my favorite book for my entire adult life. As I'm sure I've mentioned here before, every few years I used to go through it—and in fact the entire series of Herbert's original six books—just to remind me why I love it so.

(Unfortunately I now have the attention span of a gnat and sitting down to read anything more than a dozen paragraphs causes me to fidget, so I'm long overdue for a re-read of the series.)

Reading aside, the more I learned of Villeneuve's vision for the film, the more excited I became.

I was seriously hoping that this would be the spark that ignited the same sort of passion for the story in Ben that I had been carrying with me all these many years.

Unfortunately, I fear just the opposite has happened. And after last night I think DUNE is going to be one of those subjects that just isn't discussed in this house.

Ben had no interest in seeing the film, yet he agreed to go with me on a date night nonetheless because I wanted him to see it with me. I verified that the time and place would work for him (keeping in mind his commute home from Casa Grande) and he said it was fine. This week he told me he had an IEP scheduled for 4:00 that afternoon but was fairly certain he could still make it back to Phoenix in time to make our 6:15 showtime.

And then life intervened.

Yesterday was a day from hell for my husband. Around 2:30 pm a kid threatened to self-harm, and during the interview it escalated, with him threatening to hurt his dad—and Ben. Crisis was called, and after waiting 20 minutes on hold, the team was dispatched. But because there's apparently one crisis intervention crew for the entire county, Ben had no idea when they would show up.

I'll spare you the details, but we didn't make the 6:15 show. We ended up at the 9:45 pm show, didn't get back home until after 1 am, and Ben had to get up five hours later to make it to a training class this morning that is located in Fountain Hills, affectionately referred to as halfway to New Mexico. We did have a nice, leisurely dinner before the movie, something we wouldn't have gotten otherwise because I misread the website and thought the multiplex was "Dine-In IMAX," when in reality it was "Dine-In and IMAX."

Speaking of the multiplex, once upon a time the theaters at Desert Ridge were nice, but it was obvious they are long overdue for an upgrade. The "IMAX" theater wasn't a true IMAX, but rather IMAX-Lite. It may have had the requisite sound system, but the screen was only marginally bigger than what you'd get in a regular theater, not the two story monster I remember from visits to IMAX theaters in San Francisco. The seats were incredibly uncomfortable. Ben was freezing. We were only two of a couple dozen patrons wearing masks. First time back in a theater in nearly two years and this was not a good first impression.

Add to that, technical difficulties prevented the movie starting at the scheduled time, so the trailers didn't even start rolling until after 10 pm. And all I have to say about those coming attractions is, "Can Hollywood come up with nothing original?"

The movie finally started and by the time it finished, I answered that question with, yes…apparently they can if they want to.

What can I say? DUNE was everything I'd hoped for. While maybe not one-hundred percent chapter and verse faithful to the source material, it is my opinion that Villeneuve hit all the right notes and has given us as faithful a telling of the story as we're likely to ever see.

The cinematography was gorgeous. The performances brought these characters to life. The set pieces—especially the personal shields and OMG the ornithopters—despite having already seen both in the trailers, blew me away. As other reviewers have commented, Villeneuve has hit it out of the park and is without a doubt his finest work to date. Denis has filmed the unfilmable and has made it generally—Ben did have questions—accessible to people who have not read the source material or have seen other adaptations.

My only complaint—and this can be laid squarely on my own shoulders—is that because so much had been revealed in the teasers and trailers that I eagerly devoured over the past year, there wasn't a lot that I hadn't already seen in one form or another. (The Hunter-Seeker was an exception, and I loved its depiction.)

The film ended at a good point in the story, but OMG I want more. Ben liked it, but it failed to ignite the spark I was hoping for.

It's going to be a long two years (or however long it turns out to be) before we see Part 2.